It is common in the restaurant, tableware rental, food catering and moving industries for large numbers of plates or dishes to be stored and transported in stacks for economy of space and handling efficiency. Considerable difficulty can be encountered in handling stacks of dishes because they are fragile, heavy and cumbersome to handle. As a consequence, dishes are often dropped and breakage is common.
Previous attempts to solve the problems associated with transporting and storing large numbers of dishes have met only limited success. U.S. Pat. No. 2,087,375 of Ehrhardt exemplifies such prior art devices. It describes a carrying device having a plurality of upright staves connected by horizontal flexible members with a handle attached to the top of two of the upright staves. To use this type of carrying device, a number of plates are stacked on a surface and the device is wrapped around the stack and fastened with latches attached to two of the upright staves.
Not only are devices of this type bulky and difficult to store, they require that plates be stacked on a surface before the device is applied. Wrapping such a device around a stack of plates however can be manually difficult and can cause the stack of plates to topple and break. Moreover, the flexible connecting members of the device itself tends to obscure the plates making it difficult to inspect or count them without removal from the carrying device.
Plate racks such as those illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 953,007 of Haller and 1,888,141 of Orth can be used to carry a set of dishes or plates. They, however, are designed for carrying plates of food to be served with the plates spaced from each other and thus not compactly arranged in stacks.
Accordingly, it is seen that a need exists for a dish carrier by which a stack of dishes or plates may be easily transported and stored in a simple and economic manner with minimal risk of breakage. It is to the provision of such that the invention is therefore primarily directed.